Serralves
Serralves is a cultural institution located in Porto, Portugal. It includes a contemporary art museum, a park, and a villa, with each one of these being an example of contemporary architecture, Modernism, and Art Deco architecture. The museum, designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira, is now the second most visited museum in Portugal.
Foundation
Serralves Foundation is an art foundation in which the primary goal is "to raise the general public's awareness concerning contemporary art and the environment.”Serralves Foundation is constituted by the Museum, designed by the architect, Álvaro Siza Vieira, who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1992. The Villa is a unique example of Art Deco architecture, and the Park won the “Henry Ford Prize for the Preservation of the Environment” in 1997.
The buildings of Serralves - Casa de Serralves, Park, Museum of Contemporary Art, Auditorium and Library - were jointly classified by the Portuguese State as a "Building of Public Interest" in 1999 and as a "National Monument" in 2012.
Serralves develops its activities around 5 strategic axes: Artistic Creation, Audience Formation and Awareness-Raising, The Environment, Critical Reflection on Contemporary Society and The Creative Industries.
- Artistic Creation emphasizes the fine arts, through the constitution of a premier international contemporary art collection and an exhibitions program that features leading Portuguese and international artists, plus music, performing arts and film cycles that complement and enhance the exhibition program.
- Audience Formation and Awareness-Raising are achieved through innovative programs, tailored to all audience segments and ages. An example of this is the annual festival, [|Serralves em Festa].
- The Environment is enhanced by highlighting the Park as a public leisure zone merging art and the landscape.
- Critical Reflection on Contemporary Society is developed through the study and discussion of key contemporary issues, within the fields of the arts, social sciences, experimental sciences and politics.
- The Creative Industries: The Foundation assumes a pioneering role, through the creation of , and its active contribution to ensuring that the North region becomes Portugal's first creative industries cluster, via the association.
The actual President of the Foundation is Luís Braga da Cruz, former Portuguese Finance Minister.
History
During the immediate period after the 1974 revolution, the city of Oporto hosted several social movements that demanded the creation of an exhibition space in the city, in order to exhibit art produced at that time. The importance of several initiatives - in particular the , which was managed from the outset by Fernando Pernes and which remained in operation until 1980 - played a key role in consolidating the artistic universe in Oporto. These achievements were recognized by the Secretary of State for Culture, Teresa Patrício Gouveia, when she chose the city as the location for the future National Museum of Modern Art.The State acquired the Serralves Estate in December 1986 for this purpose. On this date, and prior to the creation of the Serralves Foundation in 1989, a Founding Committee was constituted, whose members were Jorge Araújo, Teresa Andresen and Diogo Alpendurada.
Serralves Park and Villa were opened to the public on May 29, 1987. The creation of the Foundation, via Decree-Law no. 240-A/89, of July 27, signaled the beginning of an innovative partnership between the State and civil society - encompassing around 51 public and private sector bodies at that time.
The Foundation signed a contract in March 1991 with the architect Álvaro Siza to design the Museum building. The Museum was inaugurated on June 6, 1999.
To house the art collection of Serralves, the Foundation promoted in 2008 an international competition for the architectural design of Pólo Serralves 21, a multifunctional building and museum branch in Matosinhos on the former grounds of EFANOR, owned by Sonae the company founded by Belmiro de Azevedo. The winner project was designed by the architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Japanese studio SANAA. However, the project was canceled in 2010 for lack of funding and agreement with the local government of Matosinhos.
In September 2014, an enlargement project was presented by Alvaro Siza to expand the premises of Serralves by transforming the garage of the Villa in the new Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira.
Museum
The Serralves Museum opened in 1999 in order to give Porto a space dedicated to contemporary art. The programming combines in-house production of exhibitions with co-productions with international institutions, enabling the circulation of works by both Portuguese and foreign artists.The exhibitions - normally three parallel exhibitions – are organized on a quarterly basis.
Since the inauguration of the Museum building in 1999 a total of 4.6 million visitors have visited the various spaces of the Foundation.
Architecture
The Serralves Foundation signed a contract in March 1991 with the architect, Álvaro Siza Vieira, in order to draw up an architectural project for the museum. Construction began five years later on the former vegetable gardens of the Serralves Estate. Siza was invited to design a museum project that took into consideration the specific characteristics of the physical setting and the need for integration within the surrounding landscape. The Museum is the Foundation's primary exhibition space and establishes a direct interaction with the Park, where several [|installations and sculptures] may be found.The 13,000-square-meter building, which includes 4,500 square meters of exhibition space in 14 galleries, opened its doors to the public in 1999, with the old Casa de Serralves serving as the foundation's head office. In 2000, an auditorium was added.
The building is built in a longitudinal manner from North to South, with a central body divided into two wings, separated by a patio, thus creating a U-shaped structure, complemented by an L-shaped construction, which creates a second patio between the latter building and the main building. This patio serves as the main access to the Museum, with a connection to the underground car park and gardens.
The Museum has exhibition rooms and storerooms for works of art, distributed across three floors. The upper floor is the location of the cafeteria/restaurant, esplanade and multi-purpose rooms, the entrance floor has exhibition rooms and a bookshop, and the lower floor houses the library and auditorium. Access to these spaces is facilitated via a square-shaped atrium located next to the reception, complemented by a cloakroom and information area, in an area adjacent to the Museum entrance. The Museum building also has a workshops area and another area for activities of the Educational Service, together with complementary areas such as a shop and a large terrace overlooking the Park.
As in most of Siza's buildings, the furniture and fittings were also designed by the architect, including lighting fixtures, handrails, doorknobs, and signage. Materials include hardwood floors and painted walls in gesso with marble skirting in the exhibition halls, and marble floors in the foyers and wet spaces. Exterior walls are covered with stone or stucco.
Collection and exhibitions
The museum opened with a proposal of works for the collection, most of which were bought in the subsequent years. Since 2003, the library has featured Mario Pedrosa, a site-specific ceiling installation composed of 77 manufactured glass globes by Tobias Rehberger. Today, the collection is constituted by direct acquisitions by the museum, works deposited by the State and private collectors and also donations. From the beginning, the collection and the various exhibitions have focussed on the period following 1968. There are no permanent exhibitions, but the museum hosts five exhibits from invited artists every year. In recent years, the museum has organized exhibitions by Alvaro Lapa, Jorge Pinheiro, Franz West, Roni Horn, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Richard Hamilton, Christopher Wool, Luc Tuymans, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Ana Jotta. Serralves shares exhibition costs with the likes of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Whitechapel Gallery or Museum Ludwig, among others.The symbolic start date for the collection is 1968, but it refers specifically to the socio-cultural events of the second half of the 1960s which, in addition to the consecration of pop art, witnessed the launch of the bases of dematerialisation of artworks, the mingling of formal genres, the use of film, photography and text to underpin conceptual projects and blurring of the lines between art and life, accompanied by widespread agitation for new political and social ideas. In Portugal, the late 1960s paved the way for the experimentalism of the 1970s and the beginning of a dialogue that was more informed by international experiences and relationships between Portuguese artists and their foreign counterparts.
Directors
The first director was Vicente Todolí. After his position as Chief Curator and then artistic director of IVAM 1988–96, he joined the Museu Serralves as its founding Director in 1996, participating in Siza's new building project for the Contemporary Art Museum, inaugurated in 1999. His last project at Serralves was the first Francis Bacon exhibition in Portugal, "Caged-Uncaged".In 2003, Vicente Todolí was appointed Director of the Tate Modern in London and João Fernandes, who had been with the museum since its opening in 1999, succeeded him as director until 2013. Under Fernandes, exhibitions at the Serralves included "Robert Rauschenberg: Travelling '70–'76" and "Bruce Nauman: One Hundred Fish Fountain, 2005".
In 2013, the British art historian Suzanne Cotter, former Guggenheim Abu Dhabi curator, succeeded João Fernandes.
Upon the departure of Cotter in 2018, João Ribas, then Chief Curator, was promoted to director.
In 2019 Ribas resigned the directorship over a controversy regarding censorship, and subsequently departed Portugal for a position with the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.
After being ousted as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2018 the French curator and director Philippe Vergne was appointed the new director of Serralves in 2019.